peterchen - Professional Profile

Summary

Peter is tired of being called "Mr. Chen", even so certain individuals insist on it. No, he's not chinese.

Peter has seen lots of boxes you youngsters wouldn't even accept as calculators. He is proud of having visited the insides of a 16 Bit Machine.

In his spare time he ponders new ways of turning groceries into biohazards, or tries to coax South American officials to add some stamps to his passport.

Beyond these trivialities Peter works for Klippel[^], a small german company that wants to make mankind happier by selling them novel loudspeaker measurement equipment.

Where are you from?[^]Please, if you are using one of my articles for anything, just leave me a comment. Seeing that this stuff is actually useful to someone is what keeps me posting and updating them.Should you happen to not like it, tell me, too

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[pre scriptum]
I've thought about removing these posts multiple times - because I consider it not good for some people that started to "find" me here. Yet, I cannot unwrite, nor undo these things, and deleting feels like cheating myself.
So if you know me personally, and stumbled in here: read if you like. But keep in mind that by reading on you are going to see me naked. Cheesy white belly and all.
[/pre scriptum]

ok paul you asked but I'm not writing this for oyu - just for me, so to say

Something weird happened to me, about a month ago.

I was at a reading, Dostoyevsky's "Crocodile", rather unusual for him and his time, reminding of the (much later) "Metamorphosis" by Kafka. There were these two redhead girls, one slender, with her rich strawberry blonde eyelashes, full-yet-pale lips, and those huge shiny freckles on her white writs. The other one - larger, someone to hold, to touch, with a wild red mane. I was lost. I couldn't have decided if they asked "which one"? I suppose my attempts to keep my eyes with me were in vain, but the slender one seemed to appreciate it. Or was it just giggling about a madly grinning how-old-is-this-guy-anyway?

Two days later, the memories of the pair'o'Circes still fresh, I wondered: which one I'd like to wake up besides?

Anna. The thought was just there, clear and simple, no surprise, no "struck by lightning". The realization came slowly, like Wile E Coyote running over the edge of a cliff, and now falling freely.

Anna. Who is almost my total opposite. The one I know since ten years ago. "For ten years" would not be appropriate: she's never alone for a long time, and we rarely meet when she's not. Yet the time we spent was always something special.

Anna. Who always throws a big party when she's looking for a new man. I've been there often enough, and it wasn't the first one I helped prepare a few days before.

Being a friend has the great advantage of hearing the name of her new desire for a week, rising in occurence, then, I think when she made the decision that it is him, she changes to the last name fo a few days, before it is "My insert first name here". Being a friend has the great advantage of getting progress updates rather immediately, and I could have known pretty well in advance that her openness would squeeze my heart like a lemon.

I wish I could have told her, but before I got myself sorted out, we slipped into the "meet rarely" phase, we keep contact by mobile, but lately this is more my initiative - which is unusual for me, and a pain in any way. I simply can't tell someone "I know you have someone but I love you", much less when she, working to much and tired, takes a one hour detour to say "Hi" before falling to sleep.

She throws her birthday party on Friday, and I'll be there. Grinning madly and clouding my thoughts, as I've always done.

[edit]Being a friend has the great advantage of getting a "we did it" update within 8 hours. She just called me at work, to say "hi" - and slip it out.[/edit]

It's weird, it's a pain, and the worst thing: I feel like I can't talk with my friends about it, not even with the two guys I considered "can talk about everything".

Because I know things about Anna that I shouldn't know even when not being fallen for her, that would make every decent heady guy shun away from her, things that don't fit my friends (beautiful nice almost-perfect)worlds - compared to the stuff I usually find myself in.

Dammit Anna. You don't fit into my life, and who the hell let you sneak in?

Paul Watson wrote:Would you want her to change and conform to the standards of your rosey cheeked social circle?

Hey!
Anna's been the "odd one out" in this group for a long time, one of her exes is among them, 2 more in the "wider vincinity".

Though the obvious answer is "no", it's not that easy.
Sure, it's what she is and how she does what I always liked about her, but there are things that are quite different for us. Sex means something different for her than for me, A kiss, the whole banana... I still believe it probably wouldn't work out long term - but still I'm hellbent on trying

The recent months "with" her already made me much more relaxed in a sense, i.e. we can talk about things that would have made me run away screaming just a year ago. I wonder if this is just about her or in general.
The more I was a shocked about my friends about the feelings that appeared lately about 'Anna and guys'. "Conservative", to say the least. And I'm not sure if they're just have it to cozy, or I am glorifying, excusing Anna.

It's not the "perfect" thing just... live gives them a fairly smooth vanilla ride, with the usual bumps and detours, but far from this cross-country-rodeo thing.
But hey, how came minced meat into the question????

well..
If you asked the others, "how many gf/bf did you have?", the count is 1..3 for almost all (and the one "restless" is now well-married)

Anna comes in notably higher, she's the type that moves in with a guy after 4 weeks (for the others half a year feels "ok", two of them it took over 3 years), she is very "body-intense" when greeting etc. (if you take my meaning), when things crash and she splits up (which makes her feel desparate), she's out and hunting againt after one or two month.

OTOH I've seen her stay in a dead relationship for half a year (and no sex, which *is* a problem for her), she's not the type that picks up the guy and kicks him out of bed the next morning (or at least, these times are long gone - if ever). She is looking for something serious, though she stays in even when she feels it's not forever.

ok ok, maybe too much information - but that's a thing I've been trying to grasp for years (ok, for month, intensely)

The worst thing life could play on me (and I know my luck with these things):
He's the one she stays with, settles down with. The more beautiful the little time we spend together, the more pain I have to stand the rest of the day, of the week.

Yet, I am trapped: being in love means for me also: all women are more beautiful. Doubly so when coming home from a long trip to saxony, known for it's beautiful girls. Another doubly for spring time. So I'm surounded by chances, offers, possibilities - yet I cannot take any of them. Lord, you screwed up here.

Ascension day: usually, you leave your ladies behind, and do a guys day.
Some ladies don't stay at home, though.

He knows what I'm up to, being nutty about me meeting AnnA, each SMS I send her, each phone call.
I know that they are not forever.
She knows what's going on, she's maximizing her benefits, which would make every other girl a "no go" for me.

Ascension day: He's away, doing his drinking stuff, she already told me "he'll be very much pissed off when I tell him afterwards". He called in the morning, before she started, she more or less cut him off.

Most beautiful Ascension day I can remember.

We're not keeping it secret, we drop by at her place, where her family can see us in bright daylight. Yet, the way he learns is ugly: AnnA wants to send me a message the evening, saying "thank you for the beautiful day" - yet something goes wrong, next day she gets a call from him: "my name is not peter". Ugh... to think that he's working out with 100 pound weights

I can't face her and say: "I know you have someone, could you please kick him out before I tell you how much I love you?" I have no feelings for him, yet I couldn't cheat him even if the situation arises.

fcuk

we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is Vonnegut jr.

Friday 17th.
She tries to save something that now seems broken from the very beginning, and this may well include the beginning 13 years ago. It is a magic evening, could have been so sweet if not for my bitterness.

When it's time to say goodbye, she sees that I am unhappy, and tries to cheer me up, maybe just so she can go. I tell her I won't stand this any longer. There was a moment where I could have chickened out - all that makes me say is: It could well go on for another year.

I still love her, I miss her, I am afraid of cycling to work and home: because it means 15 minutes with my thoughts. I feel like a fool, I feel cheated, I feel like I broke it, I feel like I betrayed her. My emotions are dancing in circles. (Insanity just seems mood swings so fast that others can't follow anymore).

Friends... if you can't decide between anger and guilt, a "Congratulations" doesn't make it better. My friends know about Anna what they do know, and draw their conclusions. Yes, from their point it was about time, it is the "best" for me. But I feel let down: neither her nor me gets the benefit of doubt, Anna being the bitch, me being the fool. I am beyond "better".

What finally broke me: She started to hide things from me. Important things. Yes, I told her once that it depends on her if she still can tell the things she used to tell. But I also told her that her openness was important to me.

It doesn't feel like being cheated once. Every memory, every beautiful moment, every heartbeat we spent together now seems staged, fake, just for her convenience. Brazil, Scene 154.

My life is full of memories of her, of being with her. Not a day some thing catches my eye, some word catches my ear, that flashes me back to a moment with her. I want to call her, see her. Yet, I am afraid that she's just fine. I am afraid that I pushed "that other AnnA" further, deeper into it's shell than she ever was before. I am afraid it starts all over again (yes mommy, please, just another breakfast with her, just as friends). I am afraid of meeting her again when all this doesn't mean anything to either of us. I'm feeling sick, angry, yucky, unbearable. For the first time in m life, I lost my fundamental, primal trust, that this whole thing, life, universe, rest, makes sense, that there is structure, reason, plan in the chaos, as twisted weird and ugly as it may be.

This is really good stuff. Maybe this is how Lawrence Durrell would write if he knew about vtables. I feel very impressed and inspired to write myself after reading this. This needs to be expanded and become a book like right now. Beautiful. Thanks Peter.

OK folks, I'm sick of being attacked for generalizations. Here's a basic course in statistics, based on the all-familiar six-sided dice. If you didn't read, or understand it, I'l label you, your family, and your nation moronic everytime you complain about a generalization.

But to start, I give you some things to fight against.

OK now for the statistics: assuming we have a perfect, six-sided die.

The average result of a die roll is 3.5.

What does this mean? The "average" is not necessarily a valid sample - no die roll will result in 3.5 eyes (unless your dice are scratched).

Still, the average is a meaningful value - rolling 100 dice, and adding up the eyes, gives a value roughly around 350. You can get 100, or 600 - but only on very lucky days. If you always score above 500, maybe you should be careful who you invite for the match (so, see, the average can save your life - and: The average gives clues about the individual samples.)